Rape of the Lock & The Cherry Orchard

Depending on interpretation, if a modern director is to accurately put the Russian classic, "The Cherry Orchard," to the stage, then he would be doing a disservice to the playwright, Anton Chekhov, if he chose to perform the play as a tragedy. The fact that the play undertakes various moral decisions should in no way restrict an audience from experiencing the light-heartedness and folly that also ensues. Likewise, any forward-thinking reader of Alexander Pope's, "The Rape of the Lock," should not be surprised that the conventional epic subjects of love and war are undermined by the author's mock-heroic style. Even though the works are of dissimilar mediums, they bridge together the gap that distances them by cultivating subject-matter that is universal: class-distinctions. Early on in Chekhov's play one of its most ambiguously complex characters, Lopakhin, reveals the awkwardness of his new status as part of the nouveau riche: "My father was a peasant, it's true, but here I am

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Category: Literature - R